Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater 3808 and Image Retention

Sat, do you have the PN58A550? If so, I have the same unit and the 3808 and I have had image retention five or six times. A couple times from the black bars on a widescreen movie, I've had the GUI from the Denon burn in even after a minute or so of using it, as well as my Samsung DVD logo, but everything disappeared after using the "scrolling bars" built into the TV.

I've inquired about this a couple times on the PN58A550 official thread and I've had responses from calibrators and "special members" saying that this is normal.

Cam, you should find out about the barring (black bars) on the widescreens....I'm sure I read somewhere, that this is why the TV settings allow you to use grey bars as an option instead of black to help avoid this.

Hey Adrian, thanks, I am aware of that function but I double checked the manual and the gray bars only work when watching 4:3 aspect ratio broadcast, it doesn't mention anything about utilizing them for (top and bottom bars) widescreen format. It may be available and I'm just not seeing it though.

Thanks, Cam, for sharing that research, I do have that same model, it's good to know that it's considered normal, I never noticed it happen from the widescreen bars before but as I was saying before I had the 663 and the images seemed less bright so there may also be an interaction effect in my case, do you play much music on the 3808? I've been wondering if it's the GUI in general or just the Rhapsody upgrade, that's where I noticed the IR effect to a very intense degree.

Anyway the tentative plan would be to calibrate which I've been wanting to do yet not gotten around to, also hopefully to set the Harmony One to select a less bright mode such as Cinema after I set up an Activity on the remote called "Play Internet Music," don't know for sure but hopefully I can set that automatically so I can teach the girls which button to press and they will be able to play music without having to adjust anything like brightness for that particular activity. On my set just shifting the volume brings up an extremely bright graphic with the volume bar and numerical indication of volume in dbs in bright white, there it only lasts for a second so it makes no immediate difference (other than supposedly to help burn out the plasma in the long run), I'm glad because I wouldn't want to adjust overall brightness for video playback to match the avr info, on the other hand I'd be happy to turn brightness way down for the music menus.

What do people think about professional calibration? Before I was thinking about having the Circuit City guy come out with his "$7,000 of professional equipment" to calibrate the video for $150, now they're out of business and last I heard BB wants $300 to calibrate both audio and video, don't suppose I really need audio calibration and given its shelf life I can't see that audio calibration would be worth it. Do those calibration DVDs work? Are they easy to use and get decent results? I might begin messing around with the settings recommended on AVS forum, however I'm always looking for a shortcut, this has been a time consuming project.

SK,

My brief thoughts on this (sorry, too lazy to write more this AM)

1) Audio -> very easy to do yourself with just the test tones in the Denon 3808, I think a calibration DVD is overkill for audio setup.

2) Video -> harder to do yourself. If when watching your display you think the video looks unrealistic or are not happy with it, then you might find the cost of a professional calibration worth it. If you're already happy with what you see on your screen, then I wouldn't bother with it as I don't believe the calibration will result in night & day difference. YMMV of course.

Jason

Thanks, that's what I thought. I do like the way the picture looks for the most part, however, I've been told that the life of the plasma would be extended by calibration, and I have no doubt it's running a little hot at the moment. I may try some minor modifications as Jay suggested (e.g., turn down brightness) until I get around to a more permanent solution.

I find it very easy to calibrate displays with just a couple of test patterns (gray steps down to below black, and up to above white), and a blue filter plus some color bars.

I did go to school where I had some video production classes, but I didn't really get the hang of what was happening with these test patterns until I had a couple calibration DVDs. Probably the easiest one to learn from is Digital Video Essentials (DVE) it also comes with the nicest set of color filters. Now since I just need the patterns I use some one of the enthusiast-built AVCHD DVD images, but still use the blue filter from DVE.

Thanks, I will check it out, ordered a copy of the blu ray version of DVE for 16.99 from Amazon Prime.

I guess I should have said "adjust" rather than "calibrate". Adjusting the default controls gets you 9/10 of the way there. That'll be a better picture than most people have. The last 10% is half setting the color of white, and the gamma curve. Those two can't be done with simple patterns and filters, you need a colormeter to do those.

But yeah, $17 to get 90%, that's great. I'd recommend watching the tutorials and just paying attention to what is being said. Don't worry about adjusting anything the first time through. Once you understand the basics, then go back through and make the adjustments.

I think they'll mention it on the disc, but some of the controls interact (they shouldn't but they do), so after you've done the big 4: brightness, contrast, color, and tint, it helps to double check them again to see if any one shifted another.

I actually prefer adjusting displays over audio. With audio it is always a bit of a guess if things are right. Once you've learned how the video patterns work, you'll have no doubt when you've got the controls in the right place; it's just obvious.